A Seed of Hope

Endless miles of hot asphalt race only inches beneath her. This journey has become all too familiar as she blankly scans the road ahead. The trips back to her parents home each weekend only followed by the same blank canvas before classes start each Monday.

“How long must I do this?” She whispers to the empty seat beside her.

Cracks and hastily planted repairs in the road counting down the miles. She opens the window to awaken her senses. This drive, this repetition that numbs her mind as she struggles to stay awake at the wheel. Thoughts are her only companion along these mindless stretches as even the radio’s blaring madness too fades into background noise.

She stops along a long isolated corridor. The pine forests frame the roads like deeply carved aqueducts where only metal and concrete flow. It is spring and mediocre patches of wildflowers fight the weeds and weekly industrial mowers for a stand of their own.

A lone whit daisy has impaled itself into the broken edges of the roadside. It’s only companions, indescript plastic wrappers and crumbled infrastructure from a tenuous, fragile barrier. Just enough protection for it to take root.

“How long must I do this?” She whispers again.

Her voice falls along the roadside as she pours the last bit of melted ice and moisture from a giant convince store fountain drink around this hopeful yet doomed spark of life. Her gaze surveys the local patches of daisies bunched together living freely and open just outside the shadows of their lanky pine guardians.

Her eyes return to her lone companion at the edge of oblivion wondering how such a beautiful thing could survive and blossom outside of its siblings’ safe haven of meadow-like grasses, weeds and illegible “do not mow” signs. She thinks to herself as if ready to ask the daisy out loud.

“What are you doing here?”

The silence in her mind is only broken by the silence of no answer. Her gaze blurs as she raises her head to the blue on blue sky. Her focus turns to nothing of consequence as she ponders the bravery and utter determination of this lone flower. Her only thought as she turns slowly to return to her drive are of her own life.